Princess of Midnight: A Retelling of Cinderella (Fairytales of Folkshore Book 6)

by Lucy Tempest

  With his Winter magic, he was the only one who could withstand those lethal freezing temperatures. That would explain why Keenan, the warm-blooded Autumn dweller that he was, hadn’t helped me. Where was he?

  But concern about Keenan’s whereabouts, the time, and my burning ankle faded before my stunned wonder as I watched Yulian squeeze water from his clothes, looking mildly upset.

  “Thank you,” I rasped, my throat already swelling with inflammation. “I don’t know why you bothered, but thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, and it wasn’t a bother.”

  “S-something is bothering you though.”

  He looked at me then, more depth and color to his eyes than before. “Why did you run away?”

  I pulled the blankets tighter around me, going lightheaded as my numbness thawed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” This was almost scoffed.

  “You’re mad,” I whimpered.

  “I’m not mad. I’m confused and a little hurt—I think.” Something like distress rose on his stiff face. “Did I say something to upset you? I’m so unused to talking to others at any length, I can’t tell when I speak out of turn. If what I said about assassination methods scared you, I assure you I was…”

  “No—no,” I rushed to interrupt him. “It had nothing to do with that. I haven’t laughed like that—ever. It definitely wasn’t you, I just …”

  I didn’t want to lie to him, not after the things he’d so freely shared with me. But I couldn’t tell him the truth either. I couldn’t bear thinking of the look of disappointment on his face if he realized why I’d been there.

  He watched me expectantly, and even in the silvery dimness of moonlight, I could see him becoming less blue—as if the distress I’d caused him was thawing his insides.

  I was at a loss for what to say when he squinted at me. “Your skin—its color is changing.”

  The panic that shock and cold had extinguished flared to life again.

  Etheline’s spell was breaking!

  Suddenly, his head whipped around as something crashed in the distance, saving me from his scrutiny. The sound of people yelling carried to us, and his distraction by the commotion allowed me to cocoon myself deeper into the blankets, hiding my face.

  A rider galloped down the road above, then slid down the snowy slope towards us.

  “Sorry I was late,” Keenan called out as he grabbed his reindeer by the antlers, bringing it to a stop before us. “There was an accident that blocked traffic all the way up to the castle.”

  His hair was damp, which meant he’d fallen through the ice, too.

  So he’d really swum up without trying to save me? And where had he been since? What other accident was he talking about?

  “Where did you go after I arrived?” Yulian asked, making me realize they’d talked at some point between the accident and Yulian diving in after me.

  Was this why Keenan had left? After being assured Yulian would save me? But left to do what?

  “I’d love to give you a full list of my activities since, but we really need to get Ella home before she catches pneumonia.” Keenan swung down, and came to slide me off the sleigh.

  Yulian rushed to stop him. “I’ll give her a ride home. My sleigh will be faster, and safer.”

  Keenan waved him off. “Maybe next time. You better get back and get some of the rest you’ve been missing.” Yulian started to protest but Keenan cut him off again. “Really, you two can continue being depressing together tomorrow.”

  I’d almost forgotten this ball was three nights. The sludge that seemed to be filling my veins started to melt as my sluggish heartbeats picked up at the thought.

  This meant more time to find whoever was trying to harm Yulian. And more time with him.

  Assuming he wanted to talk to me again after the disruption I caused by my inexplicable escape, not to mention the indignity of this unforeseen midnight dip into a frozen lake.

  I hoped he did. I wanted to talk to him again, about anything, and everything.

  Keenan helped me up on Oscar, which was awkward, since I clung to the blankets, keeping them around me, so that only my eyes were uncovered. Yulian watched me struggling to sit on Oscar’s back, his face becoming inexpressive again, before he withdrew and entered his sleigh.

  As Keenan ushered Oscar ahead of his own reindeer—Egan? Angus?—my heart convulsed as I thought Yulian would fly away without another word.

  It skittered and skidded when he only floated his sleigh beside us.

  Then looking down at me, he said, “I will see you tomorrow then?”

  “You will,” Keenan groaned. “Now go home, Yulian.”

  Yulian finally stopped his sleigh in midair, letting us overtake him. I looked back as our paths diverged and waved a trembling hand at him.

  He didn’t return the gesture as he hovered there, watching us. Once we were back on the road, he turned and soared up towards his icy castle.

  Chapter Fifteen

  As Keenan led us through his shortcut, we came within sighting distance of a road blocked by unyielding traffic. It was the source of the commotion we’d heard before.

  I could have sworn I heard Dolora’s screeching over the racket. But it must have been my half-drowned brain playing tricks on me, making me hear the sound I dreaded most in the world.

  “Wh-what did you do?” I asked him as we left the ruckus behind, teeth chattering harder now everything was settling down on me like an avalanche.

  He slowed down, letting me catch up to him, assessing me worriedly. “I kind of forgot that our shortcut was a lake and not a plain, and you sank.”

  “I know, I was there,” I mumbled numbly. “What happened after?”

  “I jumped off, but the carriage went down before I could reach you, so I dived in after you.” He voice was quiet, void of his usual humor. It was unsettling, hearing sincerity coming out of that devious being. “But we’re not made to handle that level of cold in Autumn. I knew I’d only freeze and die, and be no good to you. I had no choice but to swim back up while I still could, and run to enlist the Winter cavalry’s help. It was a stroke of luck that Yulian was leading the chase because I don’t think anyone else would have willingly jumped in that water, or survived rescuing you.”

  That was what Yulian had said. But I still thought this had been dangerous, even for him. I still couldn’t believe he’d risked himself, for me. And without hesitation.

  “When he dove into the lake,” Keenan went on. “I went back up and caused a carriage pile-up—knocked down a tree in the middle of one street, chased a bear out onto another, and made a carriage lose two wheels in the intersection.”

  Confusion, mixed with irritation, surged in my frozen face and limbs, almost overtaking the burning of my anklet. “Why? Just for the chaos of it all?”

  He rolled his eyes half-heartedly. “Any other time, I would have, for exactly that, yes. But tonight I wanted to slow everyone down so that—if you came out alive—we could still beat your stepmother back to the house.”

  “Oh.” Surprise slowed down my chattering teeth to a vibration of my molars. “That was—that’s really…” I stopped again as my sluggish mind started to race.

  So it had been Dolora I’d heard. He hadn’t only considered what would happen to me if she got home before me, but had gone to all this trouble to hold her up. And I’d just been thinking he’d left me behind and gone to play pranks on unsuspecting Winter citizens.

  Face flaming with mortification, I finally croaked, “Thank you—really—now I can think again, there was no way I could have gotten away with it …”

  He waved my thanks away. “Never fear, you can always count on me to cover my tracks.”

  We arrived at the house in silence, and the dwindling burn of my anklet subsided completely.

  Keenan half carried me inside the kitchen and placed me, shivering yet reluctant, by the blazing hearth. Sensation returned to my feet with a vengeance, until I was weeping with the pain o
f resurging blood.

  When it finally relented, I got up to change and found that beneath the blankets, my hair and dress had returned to their earlier, ruined states, but my shoes remained pristine. I took them off and stuffed them at the bottom of a rice bag.

  After I hid Yulian’s blankets and changed into my tatters, Keenan found other covers in the servant’s quarters, had me buried under three layers. He brewed me a tisane made of ginger root, honey, and an aromatic spice mix I couldn’t gauge, something he must have brought with him from Autumn.

  Uncharacteristically, he didn’t talk much, leaving me to get sucked into pockets of fresh memories, being flung back and forth from my conversations with Yulian to what I saw in the lake.

  “I almost died,” I finally said quietly, cold hands clutching the warm, glass mug.

  Keenan paused, lips puckered mid-sip, steam swirling between his eyes. “I know.”

  “I saw the Horned God.”

  He dropped the mug on the table. It landed with a dull clunk and sloshed amber liquid everywhere. “I almost got you killed.”

  I shrugged, taking a big gulp of my drink. Its spiciness smelled of too many things, and it made my head spin. “It wouldn’t have been a bad way to go. I always thought I’d die from Dolora hitting me too hard, or even setting me on fire.”

  He made an uncomfortable noise. “Etheline told me not to interfere, but you wouldn’t tell if I stuff that troll’s mattress with scorpions, would you?”

  I didn’t know what a scorpion was, but I could tell it was something alive and alarming.

  “She doesn’t need any excuses to strangle me. Don’t give her any.”

  “When we’re done with this deal then, and that thing’s off your ankle.”

  “Sure,” I mumbled into the drink. “Put on a pumpkin head and chase her through your spooky Court to your heart’s content.”

  We lapsed into silence after that. I sat there, revolving in the whirlpool of memories again, until the sound of the front door slamming open startled me out of my daze.

  I could hear Darla complaining about the ride back as she stomped up the stairs, followed by her mother ranting about their lackluster experience at the ball. None commented on the state of the entrance. Etheline had left it spotless.

  Throwing the blankets aside, I crawled to the steps below the kitchen door and peeked around it. I saw Aneira with glamor partially unfurled, returning her hair back to a mousy brown, her skin to a snot-like green, and her lilac eyes to a two-toned, cat-like state. She glanced around then up at the reinstated chandelier, still broken and missing half of its crystals, but alit and tied to the ceiling.

  Taking off her shoes, Aneira sighed. “Mother, it wasn’t that bad. It was fun, even. I met this minister, and we had a great conversation. He asked to see me again tomorrow!”

  Dolora growled, silencing her. “I told you to stop talking to that hideous man. That’s not what we went there for.”

  Aneira scoffed in offense. “He was nice, he liked me, he wants to see me again! That is what we went there for, to find us husbands!”

  “We went to get the king, and if not, a prince, and at the very least a duke. If any of those noblemen saw you talking to that man, saw you being so interested in someone so beneath them, you’d come off as desperate rather than unattainable. They won’t find you interesting, and that was why it was so easy for that ugly nymph to get the attention of the king himself!”

  “Don’t you think you’re being a bit unrealistic?” Aneira exclaimed. “The king, and that prince you insulted, won’t look at us—and that’s fine. The minister is good enough. A rich man is a rich man.”

  I knew what was coming, but that didn’t make me jerk any less when Dolora backhanded her daughter, almost knocking her off her feet.

  “I am tired of you being the deadweight I have to drag around.” Dolora gripped the front of Aneira’s dress, shaking her. “We have two days to get each of you a royal husband, and if you mess this up for us one more time, so help me I will take you out to the dead of Autumn and leave you for the monsters! Do you understand me?”

  “Y-yes, Mother,” Aneira sniffled, hand pressed to her swelling cheek.

  Dolora flung her daughter back before storming up the stairs, letting out frustrated shouts.

  Aneira ran towards the kitchen, making me stumble away from the door. Behind me, Keenan ducked inside the broom closet, narrowly missing Aneira bursting inside, sobbing and rubbing at her eyes.

  Her sobs halted when she spotted me. “You’re still up?”

  I swayed on my feet. “Your mother didn’t give me permission to sleep.”

  She sniffed loudly. “Don’t worry, you’re the last thing on her mind right now. She didn’t even notice you cleaned up the mess.”

  “Any way to keep her distracted like that forever?”

  “Yes, my big mouth,” she whined, then broke into sobs again, harder than before. “I’m so tired, Ornella. I’m so tired of doing everything wrong, of being such a failure, and I’m tired of feeling guilty about not being like her, or her precious facsimile, Darla. I don’t want to do what she’s been doing for so many years, always plotting, always wanting more, always fighting with everyone. It’s not a good way to live. It’s been the same in every place she’s dragged us to, and I hate it.” She flung herself down on a chair at the table, not noticing Keenan’s abandoned mug, and dropped her head in her hands. “I want to get away, but I don’t know how.”

  Maybe it was the storm of emotions I’d gone through since sundown, or my brain had sustained some damage from the near-drowning, but I felt a tinge of pity spark inside me. None of these creatures deserved anything but my unending hatred, but I found it hard to remain angry at her.

  While Darla, like her mother, treated me like I was a slave, someone inherently beneath her, Aneira had always treated me like I was a pet. I wouldn’t say that was a much better position to be in, but her treatment hadn’t held malice. I’d always wondered if the difference wasn’t because she was dim, but because she couldn’t be as mean as her family.

  I shuffled to the table, sat across from her.

  After a long moment of staring into my drink, I said, “Can you take this thing off my ankle?”

  She faced me, eyes wet, nose shiny with snot. “I don’t know how it works.”

  I took a gulp of my drink, feeling the burn of the spices in my scratchy throat. “Shame, we could have just up and left if I got it off.”

  Aneira stared at me, puzzled. “You want to leave?”

  Pity got shoved aside by the urge to toss the drink in her dumb face. “Of course, I want to leave. You think this here is the pinnacle of human existence?”

  “But you’re not human—” she blurted out, before pressing her fist to her mouth so hard I heard her knuckles hit her teeth. “She’s going to kill me. Kill me dead.”

  “As opposed to kill you comatose?” I snapped, shaking again. I couldn’t tell if it was on account of physical or mental inflammation or both. “What did you mean, I’m not human?”

  Panicked, she rushed up to shut the door, before turning back to me, voice hushed. “Mother always said that you’re this rare thing, one of the few things that can fuel our glamor, and that without you we’d need so much borrowed magic to make even one of us passably Seelie or human.”

  I heard the broom closet creak open and saw Keenan’s eyes glint in the firelight.

  I shook my head, felt it spinning harder. “I don’t know why you can use me to fuel your glamor, or what’s rare about me. But I’m definitely just a normal human, and you know that. You three intruded on my house not long after my sickly human mother died …”

  I trailed off, images of my mother on her deathbed slamming into my mind.

  Ashen-faced, clammy, her unfocused eyes staring at me, her dry, pale lips twitching as she’d rasped her last words, that she should have stopped trying to give my father heirs after she “found her miracle”…

  Aneira approached
the table again, still sniffling. “I’m so miserable.”

  “You’re so miserable?” I barked, shaking harder. My face was wet again. When had I started crying? “Because you got yourself in trouble with that monster that birthed you again? Because you didn’t just take off at any point in the last ten years when you could have? I had no mind of my own for as long, have been abused from the day I first saw you all, and every time I broke free, you all dragged me back. Then you chased me all the way here and chained me to you—and you’re the one who’s miserable?” I slammed the mug down hard enough to almost break it. “You can run away now, go find that fairy minister, marry him and disappear. I am the prisoner here. I can’t escape, or even fight back, without suffering even more pain and injury, and you have the gall to say you’re miserable? I know you’re a troll, but what is wrong with you?”

  My whole body was on fire now, and it felt like my blood was fizzing, like it had been replaced with sparkling cider, making my skin itch from the inside out.

  This whole mess of a conversation would have hurt less if she was behaving like her sister. It would have made my fury undiluted, my hatred pure and unyielding. But now I was torn between breaking the mug on her head and crying into her shoulder.

  “Say something!”

  She flinched like Dolora had just backhanded her again. “I just—It never occurred to me that—that you—”

  “Spit it out!”

  “I didn’t think you had feelings!”

  Didn’t think I had …?

  “I really am some animal to you, aren’t I? No, worse. Some people truly love their dogs and horses and mouser cats and treat them kindly, cry when they die. I’m an appliance to you—like a bucket or a broom!”

  “You’re more of a tree!” she blurted.

  Every thought in my head stumbled, the arms of a clock coming to a stuttering halt.

  After what felt like an eternity of being slack-jawed, drool gathering under my heavy tongue, I slurred, “What?”

  “The shape-shifting magic that we use to glamor ourselves—you can give it to others like how trees give fruit, flowers, and wood—”